At a rock music festival in the city earlier this year, the crowd is expectedly dressed in all black, a longstanding ritual for most rock aficionados. Amidst this sea of headbangers, a four-member band makes their heads turn; and it’s not because they’re on stage. Yogendra Saniyawala, Swati Minaxi, Gaurav Kapadia and Biju Nambiar, AKA The Tapi Project are dressed in handcrafted bright Indian attire, sporting bold tribal-style accessories; possibly encompassing every hue in the colour spectrum. The band, formed in 2014 and best described in Saniyawala alias Yogi’s words as a “band that knows no genres”, makes its way to Mumbai for an intimate performance today.

“Beyond boundaries and infinity, formless and untouched; coloured in ink and etched in paper — such is my poetry,” Yogi reads out over a short call. You would expect such nuanced poetry coloured in metaphor from the songwriter who has traversed nearly 30 countries across the world with his band. The catch here is that the 44-year-old band member is actually reading his earliest poem; one he wrote when he was 15. “In hindsight, it reads like a forecast of how my life would eventually pan out. This is exactly how I would define the music we make,” he shares.